Zero Punctuation - Yahtzee uses a lot of editing to cram about forty “…not!” jokes into the space of six minutes and seems to be edging into that safety zone of vague snarkiness followed by lauding a shitty product so that he’s palatable to both advertisers and his fans in the internet fame phenomenon that causes talented people to peak at age 23. Then ads run.

Latest posts - The Escapist’s version of allowing the site to be “by gamers, for gamers” or whatever buzzphrase is popular now, somebody’s having trouble with his “computor” and fancypants user Armored Prayer wants suggestions on what the best exotic pet is. We hoped it was for a game, but he seems to mean in real life.

Endo’s Game – Tom Endo, with a ripped off article title, is worried that Han Solo’s archetype might be outdated and cliched. Yes, Endo has joined the collective yawns the rest of us felt… fourteen years ago, during Waterworld, when Kevin Costner played another amoral, nameless asshole who we were supposed to like. The comments section is so boring it hurts.

The Needles - A pale, bloated Andy Chalk spends over one thousand words complaining about age checks on gaming websites with mature content as ultimately useless frivolities, given that anybody can lie about their age. He accidentally sums it up when he uses the word “legal”, then plows back into another page and a quarter of inanity. You guys are threatening Youtube every time somebody uploads a fucking video from your site. See what’s happening here?

Publisher’s Note: Gaming’s Great Recession – At fucking last, something readable. In fact, I’ll even provide a link to this one. Hard numbers, links… aside from quoting somebody who calls Halo 3 a great game and not a fucking second mission pack sequel to Halo 1, it’s a pretty good read.

Wii Owners Play Console Least, Says Nielsen – Duh.

This just days after attempted-comedian Jimmy Fallon devoted NBC airtime to shilling for Microsoft’s Project Natal and Xbox 360.  Kotaku was sure to cover that too…four times, in fact.

A slow week perhaps?  I mean, it’s not like E3 just wrapped up or something…

I only bring this up because I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen Kotaku praised as a paragon of journalistic integrity…despite of the fact that these guys have even less to gain from maintaining these (fictitious) standards than your average GameSpot writer.

But I’m the douchebag for pointing it out, right?

As usual, the primary source of our gleeful laughter comes from one source: The mouths of stupid people.

“this is extremely heartbreaking.”

Dramatic much, you tiny girl?

“Come on, these are the things that gamers look forward to.”

I look forward to three things; Food, sex, and our weekly shipment of 12-year-old Russian boys. I’m not saying my way is the only way, but it’s a shit of a lot better than what you’ve got going on, obviously.

“This ruined my day.“

You’re going to jump off a cliff when you hear this, then: The New Kids on the Block broke up.

“my heart shattered when I read the news”

Leave it to somebody with the user name conniedarko to make Richard Simmons look all kinds of Rambo manly.

Here’s the dumbest crap, though;

“In a period of time where a lot of businesses are getting smaller – contracting, if you will — we’re growing,” -CEO of UGO.com, after having laid off over 30 people.

I could let this pass without feeling the need the need to point it out and say shame on you, Satan, but one of those sites was the bowl of mirth that is Atomic Gamer (link not included for your protection). Apparently Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts is still front page news here, and I’m always game to read a negative review. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but apparently Banjo’s combination of frictionless surfaces and vehicles with all the torque of a Taco Bell is a winner in the eyes of AG’s staff of paraplegics and cannibals, because it walked away with an 89%. I know what you’re saying, “Vance, 89% is what gaming sites give Microsoft games when they want to keep receiving promotional swag yet need to send an S.O.S. smoke signal to gamers to stay the fuck away.” I’d offer this explanation myself, except for three fine points within the article.

1) The author takes a passing swipe at Little Big Planet and Peter Moore, claiming that Banjo would get more attention if LBP weren’t so overhyped and that Moore’s assertation that Rare isn’t the juggernaut it once was is a foolish statement.

Well, Little Big Planet works, for starters. It lives up to the hype, and actually exceeded my expectations. Banjo failed to meet them, and that’s saying something concerning a game on a system whose controller I dread the use of.

Also, the usually insane Peter Moore had a moment of clarity and it was the wrong point to attack on the reviewer’s part. Rare cranks out very pretty games that have gigantic worlds with very little in them and make navigating between these fleeting points of interest a lot more challenging than the boss fights you’ll find there. Besides Viva Pinata, Rare has yet to create a decent post-N64 game in anything but the looks department. And ask any frat boy, all looks and no lap dance skill just don’t cut it.

2) The quality of the article speaks for itself (oh fuck it, here you go. A world of wonderment and excitement awaits you). Big blocks of text, check. Long, run-on sentences, check. Grammar of opening sentence implies Banjo and Kazooie are a single entity, check.

Big-ass second paragraph is repeated twice, check.

Okay, we’re not professionals. In fact, we’re a small group of janitors and fluffers pretending to be professionals, much like the staff of 1up.com. But we don’t do shit like that.

3) Double apology. Maybe this ain’t so major to you, but I find “Don’t get me wrong” to be one of the lowest forms of conversation. It’s a pussified way to make a point. Maybe I’ll let you get away with it once in a while, but if it shows up twice in a single conversation, you need to stop talking and get back to mopping the floor at McDonald’s.

So we took great delight in not only reading “Don’t get me wrong, LBP totally deserves the attention” after the sideswipe proclaiming that it’s stealing Banjo-Kazooie: Where’s the Beef?’s thunder, but also the ending megaparagraph’s “However, as a gamer who’s spent the last eight weeks blasting aliens, zombies, and insurgents (and believe me, I’m not complaining)”.

As a final word, Microsoft does NOT release good games for anything less than $60, and they have yet to drop the decidedly mediocre Halo 3’s price at all so far. Nuts & Bolts was released at $40. Do the math.

FUN FACT: Despite being a good-looking game, the lead characters of Nuts & Bolts look like utter ass.

“This ain’t your Grandpa’s favorite board game! “Chess Crusade” brings and [sic] edgy and exhilarating twist to the most popular and timeless strategy game ever created. Two cartoon-style medieval armies take to the checkered battlefield in a classic game of chess. As the pieces move around the board, they meet with intense animated combat moves in an effort to conquer or be conquered. The entertaining and colorful artistic style makes “Chess Crusade” a game that everyone – from the novice to the master – can enjoy.“

Holy crap! “Intense animated combat moves? IN CHESS!? I have never heard of this before. And certainly not in a form that was ported to roughly 18 different platforms.

I mean, if you really want to take Battle Chess and attempt to pawn it off as something new, you should at least have some kind of gimmick. (Warning: Do not click that last link, ever.)

Apparently a “huge” issue, Capps is steamed that he’s not making money off of used game sales and rentals… somebody point out to this guy that Blockbuster’s stock didn’t fall off the back of a truck and that used sales have been going on for a couple of decades plus some change.

“The secondary market is a huge issue in the United States. Our primary retailer makes the majority of its money off of secondary sales, and so you’re starting to see games taking proactive steps toward that by… if you buy the retail version you get the unlock code,” he said of his misfiring synaptic fit about punishing you guys for something that keeps him from buying a 27th yacht.

“I’ve talked to some developers who are saying ‘If you want to fight the final boss you go online and pay USD 20, but if you bought the retail version you got it for free’. We don’t make any money when someone rents it, and we don’t make any money when someone buys it used – way more than twice as many people played Gears than bought it.
”

All I hear is Droopy Dog whining when I try to read the above quotes, personally.
Okay, so it’s amazing that games maintained a steady price tag of $50 (excepting Nintendo’s attempts to get us to buy the stinky Shadows of the Empire for $80) for the better part of two decades, but I think we’ve made headway against the rising cost of production by whoring out billboards and our characters’ cell phones to Motorola, right?

But no, apparently Capps and other exploding, syphilitic cankers in the executive wing of the gaming world believe that download-only games need that extra nudge, squashing the competition so that their great savings of… what, four dollars off for a caseless game that you lose with your hard drive? … is necessary.

We salute you, Mike Capps, for helping making this new feature possible.

As a special bonus, we present Epic’s Cliff Bleszinski in his latest attempt to convince you he’s hetero.